UTSA, HSC announce Center for Innovation in Drug Discovery

Special to theNorthwest Weekly

Updated 10:06 am, Thursday, September 6, 2012

Photo: Courtesy Photo / UTHSCSA

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The UT Health Science CenterÕs Matthew Hart, Ph.D., high-throughput screening director for the new Center for Innovation in Drug Discovery, is pictured with a half-million-dollar PerkinElmer Operetta instrument that provides super-fine resolution for imaging of cells on slides and micro-well plates. The instrument is integrated with a robotic plate handler, a micro-plate incubator, a bar code reader and scheduling software to form a system that can screen thousands of compounds for potentially therapeutic properties.

Taking homegrown discoveries — research findings observed in laboratories in San Antonio — and turning them into drugs to treat disease is the focus of the Center for Innovation in Drug Discovery (CIDD) being built at both the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

Doug E. Frantz and Stanton McHardy in the UTSA Department of Chemistry are building a medicinal chemistry core facility in labs on the UTSA Main Campus. Frantz, the CIDD co-director, and McHardy, the CIDD Medicinal Chemistry Core director, have almost 20 years of experience between them with Merck and Pfizer.

“Several top-tier universities have established centers dedicated to the discovery and development of new drugs that will treat devastating human diseases,” said Frantz, whose vision was a driving force in the center's formation. “The most successful of these enterprises have included faculty and research staff who bring pharmaceutical industry experience to the table. Both Dr. McHardy and I have worked on U.S. Food & Drug Administration-approved drugs during our professional careers and we believe these experiences will greatly benefit the CIDD here in San Antonio.”

CIDD Co-Director Bruce Nicholson., professor and chair of biochemistry in the School of Medicine at the UT Health Science Center, and Matthew Hart, the CIDD high-throughput screening director, are developing a High-Content/High-Throughput Screening Core Facility that will enable researchers to rapidly sift through thousands of potentially therapeutic compounds. This will be housed at the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Campus of the Health Science Center starting in November, but the high-content imaging screens are already operational in temporary laboratories at the Texas Research Park.

“In order to identify small molecules or peptides that can bind to a protein or impact a cellular process that could represent a good target for disease therapy, you need the capacity to test and compare thousands of compounds to see which one works the best,” Nicholson said. The high- screening facility will bring this capability to the San Antonio research community. It will offer not only biochemical screens to test how well potential drugs bind their targets, but will also provide screens of live cells to assess compound effects on cell behavior.

The CIDD is designed to help develop drugs out of original discoveries made at the Health Science Center and UTSA to treat all forms of disease and infection. “San Antonio has always been among the top Phase I centers in the country,” Nicholson said. “But what we've not done very much is take homegrown discoveries and turn them into the next-generation drugs. This center is designed to facilitate that.”